Slave Breeding; Fact or Fiction

[Freddy]

What would be a valid study would encompass looking at several Southern newspapers where slave auctions took place. Then you study and document all the adverisments for selling slaves over several years. Next if you separated those ads into ones that mentioned breeding and those that did not you could better quantify the data on slave owners who engaged in breeding and those that either did not or failed to mention it. I wonder if anyone has done this?

[ole]

You have just volunteered, Freddy. Let's hear it for Freddy! I have just marked my calendar to check on your progress during 2015.

ole

[timewalker]

What would be a valid study would encompass looking at several Southern newspapers where slave auctions took place. Then you study and document all the adverisments for selling slaves over several years. Next if you separated those ads into ones that mentioned breeding and those that did not you could better quantify the data on slave owners who engaged in breeding and those that either did not or failed to mention it. I wonder if anyone has done this?

The problem is that I do not think the ads would necessarily mention breeding slaves. You could pick the slave breeders if they were selling children younger than 10 without their mothers, but since this was illegal in some places and no doubt frowned upon in others, I would guess much of the traffic in children was not advertized.

[ole]

but since this was illegal in some places and no doubt frowned upon in others, I would guess much of the traffic in children was not advertized.

If there was slave-breeding (and I believe there had to have been at least a little), it would doubtlessly be conducted in some secrecy.

The ad previously mentioned is innocent enough to be excluded. The man has a girl with two baby girls. She's superfluous on his plantation, so she's for sale. (I do notice, however that there's no mention of a father.) At least he has the good grace to offer them as a package.

ole

[unionblue]

To All,

You all (ole, timewalker, at least) mention the idea that slave-breeding had to be kept secret.

Why?

If the owning and selling of black slaves was considered nothing more than the owning and selling of property, not PEOPLE, then why would the breeding of slaves for that market be considered so bad, so horrible, that it had to be done in secret?

Your reasons?

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

While I emphatically don't believe my southern ancestors fought to support slavery nor my Union ancestors fought to suppress it, I can see some merit in Union Blue's notion that their actions may have unwittingly supported that general effort.

Thank you, Larry. Sort of like American GIs fighting in Europe coming across concentration camps and saving surviving Jews from the ovens, even when they didn't fully believe or know about such places existing.

What I do believe is that slavery existed. Too many slave markets such as Fayetteville and Memphis survived to suspect otherwise. As for newspapers being a source document, one really wouldn't expect to find a notarized affidavit from a slave that he or she was sold or offered for sale. Preponderance of evidence in the number of newspaper adds suggests some activity was about. Remember that in 1861-65, the yankees, aside from the ones in the US Army, hadn't moved south, so there was still some truth in advertising. Besides, an ad in the paper for goods that didn't exist as noted, could have and probably did, get more than one man shot. I, for one, vote with Union Blue.

Very deeply appreciated, Larry.

Unionblue

[timewalker]

Blue:

I base this on the fact that it was apparently illegal in two Southern States. Given that, I would conjectiue (and it is only conjecture) that it would be looked down upon in other places. But that is perhaps my 21st Century bias showing through. I do not have any basis other than this for thinking it would have been frowned upon. Might have to do some looking.

[unionblue]

Blue:

I base this on the fact that it was apparently illegal in two Southern States. Given that, I would conjectiue (and it is only conjecture) that it would be looked down upon in other places. But that is perhaps my 21st Century bias showing through. I do not have any basis other than this for thinking it would have been frowned upon. Might have to do some looking.

timewalker,

I think you have hit the nail on the head with this one.

It seems we all tend to make a judgement call with our own 21st century views showing through. We can't help it as it is almost automatic, as this is the only viewpoint we currently have.

My own opinion is why should there be shame attached to the breeding of property? People bred their cows, sheep, hogs, etc., to increase the herd and the value of that herd.

There was a constant demand for slaves and slave labor. It was not in decline or no longer in demand, just the opposite right up to and through the Civil War. So where do we get this idea that slave-breeding was so awful it had to be conducted in secret or not talked about in public when it seems the very act of it was practiced in effect by EVERY owner of slaves to one degree or another?

It seems it once again comes down to what was viewed as right and proper BEFORE the war, and what was viewed as right and proper AFTER the war.

IMO.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[ole]

Blue:

Basing it on the understanding that the slave-trader was not usually accepted into polite society. And I'm basing that on biographies of Forrest who did get heavily into trading. The only way he got accepted into Memphis sassity was because he was so overwhelmingly rich.

If the trader was considered socially unacceptable (even though the owners usually relied on his services), how much more unacceptable would be the man who arranged couplings to produce more and better babies? We don't see records of it because it wasn't there? Or because it was not exactly savory?

And there is talk about laws against that sort of thing. One question: In any given area, who controlled the law-enforcement?

ole

[unionblue]

Blue:

Basing it on the understanding that the slave-trader was not usually accepted into polite society. And I'm basing that on biographies of Forrest who did get heavily into trading. The only way he got accepted into Memphis sassity was because he was so overwhelmingly rich.

Are we pretty sure that the slave-trader was NOT usually accepted into polite society? Is this just an assumption on our modern, post Civil War, 21st century outlook?

I have not read the biographies you have mentioned on Forrest above, but I understand that Forrest came from a very poor background and was uneducated to the point he could not cypher or spell very well. Could it be because of his poor upbringing and background that he was shunned or looked-down upon and slave-trading bought him a ticket into genteel society? I think we should look very hard at this idea of a society founded upon slavery, yet those who made this society possible, the slave-trader and the slave-breeder, are somehow looked down upon.

I also feel that slave-breeding may have taken on a new importance when the African Slave Trade was finally abolished. When the outside/overseas source was closed off, how did one get more slaves?

If the trader was considered socially unacceptable (even though the owners usually relied on his services), how much more unacceptable would be the man who arranged couplings to produce more and better babies? We don't see records of it because it wasn't there? Or because it was not exactly savory?

Again, I question this view. Is this your own or are you exclusively basing it on your Forrest biographies? Or is this just a basic assumption on your part. Just curious.

And there is talk about laws against that sort of thing. One question: In any given area, who controlled the law-enforcement?

And yet the practice seems widespread and one that other planters and slave-traders were extremely interested in. And what about the idea that when the soil played out in the upper South to cotton and tobacco growing, that those states turned more to slave-breeding to ship off their surplus to the slave-hungry lower South?

ole

Just being curious as to where the views come from, you understand.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[Jules362]

What hypocrites. The people who bought the slaves looked askance at the sellers. That's a little like pretending you never shop at Walmart because it's considered a little tacky, isn't it?

And how about all the female slaves who were impregnated by ol' massa? He who often held his own children in bondage, or sold them off so that someone else could enslave them? Just another dirty little secret that didn't get talked about in polite society, I guess.

It's really hard to get hold of the Southern mind-set in the 1800s.

[ole]

Excellent questions Blue, and I expected some of them.

Are we pretty sure that the slave-trader was NOT usually accepted into polite society? Is this just an assumption on our modern, post Civil War, 21st century outlook?

Other than the stories about Forrest and his trading days, I have no idea, but I can assure you that nothing was taken from a 20th or 21st perspective.

Could it be because of his poor upbringing and background that he was shunned or looked-down upon and slave-trading bought him a ticket into genteel society?

I suppose it could be, but the author was rather convincing that it was because of his trading.

I think we should look very hard at this idea of a society founded upon slavery, yet those who made this society possible, the slave-trader and the slave-breeder, are somehow looked down upon.

I don't suppose that you would be surprised that I disagree. Aristocrats, of any stripe, invent their own rules. Every year the planters borrowed money from norther financiers and paid it back when they harvested. And they had the nads to resent having to do so. In an atmosphere like that, there is nothing impossible.

I also feel that slave-breeding may have taken on a new importance when the African Slave Trade was finally abolished. When the outside/overseas source was closed off, how did one get more slaves?

In my cobwebbed mind, there is no question that those planters whose land was playing out were selling slaves down the river. The question is, were some raising slaves as a profit center?

I question this view. Is this your own or are you exclusively basing it on your Forrest biographies? Or is this just a basic assumption on your part. Just curious.

A little of this, a little of that. I do see, or think I do, some truth to the supposition. I could be trying to bunt when a man is on first and there are two outs. But I also think that the aristocrat is predictable. Flip him over and you know where he's going to land.

But these are my thoughts. And, I ramble.

ole

[ole]

What hypocrites. The people who bought the slaves looked askance at the sellers. That's a little like pretending you never shop at Walmart because it's considered a little tacky, isn't it?

And your point is, Jules? I never shop at Walmart. You don't either? There is a goodly touch of hypocrasy tainting each of us.

And how about all the female slaves who were impregnated by ol' massa? He who often held his own children in bondage, or sold them off so that someone else could enslave them? Just another dirty little secret that didn't get talked about in polite society, I guess.

There is some evidence that a few white fathers of slave children kinda sorta watched over their seed, but the list is a mite short.

It's really hard to get hold of the Southern mind-set in the 1800s.

Yes it is. I don't guess we'll ever get into that.

ole

[unionblue]

What hypocrites. The people who bought the slaves looked askance at the sellers. That's a little like pretending you never shop at Walmart because it's considered a little tacky, isn't it?

Jules, I am firmly of the opinion that the people who bought slaves from slave-traders did NOT look down upon them or socially lower them to the bottom of the social ladder.

And how about all the female slaves who were impregnated by ol' massa? He who often held his own children in bondage, or sold them off so that someone else could enslave them? Just another dirty little secret that didn't get talked about in polite society, I guess.

It's really hard to get hold of the Southern mind-set in the 1800s.

From the book, Slave Trading in the Old South, by Frederic Bancroft, Chapter XVII, The Status Of Slave-Trading:

"In the Old South, slave-trading was as lawful as any other business. To have stopped it in any State would have made slavery there moribund. If the National Government had at any time before 1861 forbidden the interstate slave-trade, secession would have been precipitated in every Southern State, except Delaware. This was because such a prohibition would have been considered destructive of what was generally regarded as a vital part of the social and economic organization of the South. Slave-trading and slavery were mutually necessary.

The Charleston Mercury's assertion--that "slaves * * * are as much and as frequently articles of commerce as the sugar and molasses which they produce"--and Dr. Wyeth's opinion--that "the selling and buying of negroes was as common in the cotton-belt of the South at this period as the buying or selling of horses or cattle, or any other merchantable live product."--these truly described the general prevalence of slave-trading."

The rest of the chapter goes on to describe slave-traders as being looked upon as honest businessmen. "The business is conducted by him, and by other regular traders, in such a manner, that there is never any suspicion of unfairness in regard to their mode of acquiring slaves." Another line from the book states, "The most successful large slave-traders held their heads high, confidently proclaiming their own virtues and admitting no sins."

"When traders prospered, were honest, thrifty and bought plantations, like Forrest, the Woolfolks, Isaac Franklin and many others, they enjoyed the esentials of respectability."

"If honest and well-mannered traders had been hated, a judge of the highest character in Mississippi would hardly have volunteered the information that he had bought a slave of Forrest; nor would a judge in another State have written to the author: "He [a famous trader] was a personal friend of my father and first came to my attention * * * when he purchased * * * my nurse Emaline, which intensely excited my childish indigation." Nor ould those Virginia churches have paid their pastors for more than half a century by the hiring out of purchased slave girls and their numerous offspring. Nor would auctioneers, general agents, brokers and commission merchants so eagerly have engaged in slave-trading; nor would factors, bankers, investors and merchants, in their different ways, have been so ready to associate themselves with its financial operations. And how could it have been hateful to trade honestly in the most coveted and prestige-giving property, which guardians and trustees, by order of the courts, brough for widows and orphans? Moreover, if slave-trading, apart from the "n*i*g*g*e*r-trading" type had been hateful, how could there have been such widespread curiosity about high prices and such eagerness to speculate by buying slaves on credit, confident that the rapid rise in price together with the natural increase would produce an enormous percentage of profit?

...No less conclusive was the attitude of Southern newspapers. "The printer" or "the editor" was a willing intermediary, a mediating agent, and, for small sales, was often preferred to the regular trader or the formal agent when secrecy and economy were desired. The leading journals gratefully received and conspicuously displayed advertisements of regular traders and others to sell, buy or hire out slaves. All favorable phases of slave-trading were of prime interest to readers and, therefore, were welcome subjects for the ready editorial pen...

Where such things were possible, frequent and passed without causing comment, honest traders without offensive personal qualities could not have been hated. It all came to virtually to this: whatever respectable persons thought needful in buying or selling slaves was not viewed as having any taint of "hated" slave-trading; yet it early became a fully credited tradition, implicitly accepted generation after generation, that "all traders were hated.""

Submitted for your consideration,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

To All,

A few websites on the topic I would like to share.

Look Away, Look Away.

http://styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=16935

Slave Breeding.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USASbreeding.htm

Breeding a Nation, by Pamela D. Bridgewater.

http://www.southendpress.org/2007/items/87781

Slavery and the Old South.

http://www.olemiss.edu/courses/liba1...e_families.pdf

The Illicit Slave Trade.

http://multiracial.com/site/index2.p...o_pdf=1&id=461

Gynecological Resistance Within the Plantation Community.

http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/ava...linethesis.pdf

Enjoy,
Unionblue

[timewalker]

Blue:

Thanks for the sites. I will have to check them out. I fully admit that this is not an area I know much about. Most of what I know I learned here on the forum.

I guess I have some reading to do.

[larry_cockerham]

Excellent questions Blue, and I expected some of them. Other than the stories about Forrest and his trading days, I have no idea, but I can assure you that nothing was taken from a 20th or 21st perspective.I suppose it could be, but the author was rather convincing that it was because of his trading.I don't suppose that you would be surprised that I disagree. Aristocrats, of any stripe, invent their own rules. Every year the planters borrowed money from norther financiers and paid it back when they harvested. And they had the nads to resent having to do so. In an atmosphere like that, there is nothing impossible.In my cobwebbed mind, there is no question that those planters whose land was playing out were selling slaves down the river. The question is, were some raising slaves as a profit center?A little of this, a little of that. I do see, or think I do, some truth to the supposition. I could be trying to bunt when a man is on first and there are two outs. But I also think that the aristocrat is predictable. Flip him over and you know where he's going to land.

But these are my thoughts. And, I ramble.

ole

Probably the most insight as to Forrest's time in Memphis is in Andrew Wyeth's account if I remember correctly. Forrest got himself elected to a couple of terms as Memphis alderman. That tells me two things. He had money. He had friends. He was no Rhodes scholar (although Rhodes college is in Memphis). You gotta remember that he was in Memphis, not Boston. His reputation for kindness and at least fairness in his business ventures was not all smokescreen, if at all. He, during the long war, exhibited many human and humane traits when at rest or between bouts of trying to kill folks.

[larry_cockerham]

Had to back to see where I'd mistyped that -- get aging fingers on the wrong home key and you get ike. But I see now that it wasn't my aging fingers playing tricks.

ole

It was your fingers, down in one of the newcomer posts. Slide the right hand to the left one key and ol becomes ik. The e sneaked out of the left hand in the right place. Who's on first?

[Bobbie]

I find this excerpt interesting:

"I was taught in the nursery that slavery was a wrong, and to look upon the negro trader with horror and disgust. I have lived to see men in high places — men selected to make our laws — trade for them by the hundred, and hurry them off, as fast as steam could carry them, to the far West where fertile lands reward the husbandmen with abundant harvests. Virginia and Maryland, without shock to our moral sensibilities, enjoy the humane privilege of breeding and rearing Christianized slaves for the Southern market, just as the Kentuckians do mules and hogs. Now, as trading in human flesh is inseparable from the existenceof slavery, some little forbearance should be extended to those who are so " impracticable, visionary and foolish as to think that the trade should be conducted on something like Free Trade principles. Some charity should be manifested toward those who think there is no more wrong in going to Africa to buy a slave than to Virginia or Maryland".

Gov. J.H.Adams to Committee of Arrangements at Edgefield, August 30th, 1858.

(Quote from: M.Gregg, An Appeal to the State Rights Party of South Carolina in Several Letters on the Present Conditions of Public Affairs, Columbia, S.C., 1858, p. 6).

[ole]

Thanks for that, Bobby. Interesting indeed.

Ole

[Leah's Choice]

To the topic listed in the title of this thread, Slave Breedng, Fact of Fiction, recently I was reading a chapter from Alf Burnet's "Incidents of War," titled "Atrocities of Slavery," which included the following vignette:

Another instance: The wealthy and prominent Colonel G---, of Gallatin, Tenn., a very respectable and high-toned gentleman, who is reputed a kind-hearted and benevolent man, remarkably lenient toward his slaves, whose praise is in the mouths of our Northern soldiers for his kind hospitalities, finding that his slaves, in view of the coming difficulties, did not increase fast enough for profit, called them all together on the 1st of January, 1862, and said to them: "Now, wenches, mind, every one of you that ain't 'big' in three or four months, I intend to sell to the slave-trader." He afterward chuckled over it, adding that it "brought them to terms." Comment needless.

The outrageous act of some jackass slaveholder
ordering women to get pregnant so he can sell or enslave her children is mind-boggling.

The same chapter contains several descriptions of slaves who were the children of slave owners, used as slaves, and as abused as though they were of the usual status of slaves, meaning about as important as a cow, and probably less than a horse. One young woman fathered by the man who owned her mother, was sent to school in New York, but at the age of 15, her father came and took her from the school, and forced to live as his mistress for several years. She gave birth to his child at age 16. She was later "married" off to a black man, with whom she had several more children...her husband eventually abandoned her and the children. By that time the war was in full swing, and ol massa had gone off to fight the Yankees. Described as a very wealthy man who owned many houses in....I believe it was New Orleans...this woman had no way to pay the rent on the house she was living in, and was being evicted. She applied to the Northern army then in control of the city to be given one of the houses owned by her father. This was evidently done...although the story ends there and there's no indication of what happened when "Daddy" came home and found his formerly enslaved daughter living in one of his stately houses.

Another part that lingers...briefly (there's more to it than I'll write here) concerns a Northern army captain, invited to dinner by the wife of a Doctor who wanted to meet a Yankee who wouldn't deny that he was an abolitionist. (I think I have that right). During the visit, the doctor and the captain had a discussion about the why the South started the war. One of the doctor's arguments was that the North was violating the constitution because Southerners were not being treated equally with Northerners since they could not go into the territories and take their slaves with them. The captain argued back that a man from Ohio and a man from Alabama were treated exactly the same. He said (paraphrased) that a man from Ohio could move to the territories and take with him his household goods, merchandise and cattle. A citizen from Alabama has exactly the same right. However, the Alabama man cannot go to the territories and take his slaves with him....and neither can the man from Ohio. Therefore, they were being treated equally.

I rather liked that.

[unionblue]

However, the Alabama man cannot go to the territories and take his slaves with him....and neither can the man from Ohio. Therefore, they were being treated equally.

I rather liked that.

Leah's Choice,

So do I.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[ole]

Which outweighs the other? The horror stories of a slaver's children being sold, or the stories of the darkies serenading the massa's family with spirituals at sunset with mint juleps on the happy veranda?

I suspect that, while mythological, neither are myths. There are believable tales of Yanks "invading" Confederate territory being highly incensed at the number of slaves they found indistinguishable from themselves. And there are believable tales of the faithful "servant" who presented his life in lieu of massa's.

There's evidence of both.

We ought to quickly dispense the idea that all Yankees were abolitionists and all Confederates were racist slavers. That's too easy. Factor in "human" and we get a better picture.

If you are a human, and I suspect all of us are, there is an inherent tendency to consider different as a threat. If one carries that a step further, different is an enemy.

It's a simple concept. You're different, you suck.

Period.

Today, we're not quite so threatened by different. (Not all of us, but enough to question the validity of the conviction.)

Much too much thinking to reduce to a few platitudes.

Just a thought.

Ole

[bama46]

Leah wrote:

"The outrageous act of some jackass slaveholder
ordering women to get pregnant so he can sell or enslave her children is mind-boggling."

Leah, you have to place yourself in the context of the timees...

Think, if you will, of cattle instead of slaves. To the slave holder, the human he held in bondage was property, notining more or less. A cattleman will judge a cow in exactly that manner... be preganant or be gone...
why?... because calves, like slave children, are valuable... not necessarily to sell, but to increase the holdings...

Please understand I am not advocating this, but rather trying to see the parallels from the standpoint of the "farmer/cattleman/slaveholder"

[OpnOlympic]

Moral Relativism, was not accepted by all critics of slavery even before the CW.